Blood Is the New Black

by Valerie Stivers

  “Being an airport greeter is a good job for interns,” she says. “Too good for you. I’ll ask your colleagues to do it.”

  “I’m sorry, Lexa.” There’s nothing else I can say.

  “You may have Lillian fooled,” she tells me, “but you don’t have me fooled. You’ll get what’s coming to you.”

  I guess this is the part where we talk about what happened on Wednesday.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeat. “It was a mistake.”

  She snorts. “Do you see what you’ve done to my skin?”

  “Your skin looks perfect.”

  This is the wrong thing to say. Her eyes narrow. “I’ve lost several degrees of luminosity. It will take weeks before I look lustrous in photos again.”

  This is probably the worst thing I could have done to her. Her turquoise cat’s eyes are burning with rage.

  A muscle jumps in her powder-white cheek, and her delicate hands tremble. I can feel that I’m in danger. She holds her hands up so I can see her nails—still manicured, though with arcs of dirt visible through the pale pink polish. Before my eyes the nails grow, turning into wicked, pale pink lacquered talons. She draws one along my cheek, and I feel my skin tearing. The garlic I’ve rubbed myself with this morning is not deterring her.

  “Lexa!” Annabel has appeared in the doorway, a “juice” in each hand. I’ve never been so glad to see her. “Remember what Lillian said!”

  Lexa takes a few steps back. “She damaged my skin,” she says.

  “But Lillian is going to take care of her,” Annabel says brightly. “And then you are going to get a promotion. Remember?”

  Annabel rolls her eyes at me. “Lexa’s mad at you,” she says sympathetically. “But what can you expect?” She shoves a juice—I’m going to keep calling it that—into Lexa’s hand and puts the other one on the desk.

  Lexa barks orders while slurping. “Get me a call sheet,” she tells Annabel. “Arrange for those other two interns to greet the models at the airport. And get Giedra on the phone.”

  Then her eye falls upon me again. “Someday I’m going to torture you, slowly and for a long time, and then I’m going to kill you,” she says pleasantly.

  Annabel pats her on the shoulder. “Maybe we should go to yoga after work. And Kate, I just ran into Charlotte. Lillian wants to see you in her office.”

  THIS TIME, there’s no Reiki healer. Lillian is at her desk wearing an off-the-shoulder crimson dress so tailored it reminds me of armor, or eighties Armani.

  “Shut the door behind you.”

  Goose bumps prickle my flesh.

  “I heard about the nasty little trick that you played, cherie,” she says finally. “Have you no loyalty to me?”

  “Lillian…” Despite everything I now know about her, I feel guilty.

  “You show me no gratitude,” she says bitterly. “You’re just like your mother.” She stares and I can feel her gaze slice through me. “I declared your ensembles creative when everyone else said they were confused.”

  Ouch. That hurts.

  “And you repay me with holy water? It’s so last century.”

  She gets up and walks around to the front of her desk, revealing the fact that her shoes are off and she has twists of paper between her toes. Somebody just got a pedicure.

  “You know,” she says, “I was willing to forgive you even this. I thought, She’s a young girl, of course she’s curious.”

  A strange lassitude soaks into my limbs.

  Lillian leans over me. “So I went to your house last night. I wanted to talk to you after you’d seen Lexa. To help you come to terms with what you had learned.”

  I’m perfectly alert but so weak I can hardly move my limbs. And I have a terrible feeling that I know what is coming next.

  “But somebody else had arrived before me.”

  James. She’s finally found out about James.

  “Please, Lillian,” I croak. “I was as surprised as you were.”

  She shakes her head. Her movement is fast, brutal, inhuman.

  “You took from me the one thing that could make this boring parade of glamorous parties and expensive new outfits bearable.”

  “No…”

  “Nothing has been the same since Gene left,” she says. “Where did all the enjoyment in existence go?” I know what’s coming. She’s going to bite me. She lifts my limp arm from my lap. My tulip sleeve tumbles back, exposing my pale forearm with its occasional dark freckles. Her eyes now glow red as embers, her lips stretch back, her mouth distorts, and her fangs are bared. Lillian turns the tender flesh on the inside of my wrist skyward, then dips her dark head. Her sharp teeth puncture my skin and sink into the meat of my wrist. The pain is exquisite, but I can’t cry out. I shudder with revulsion at the feel of her cold lips, her dry mouth, and her burning, invasive teeth. The life force pulses out of me with each spasm of my heart.

  It seems to last an eternity but can only be a few seconds.

  Lillian breaks the seal, licks the wound, and drops my arm like a dead thing.

  My face is wet with tears. I grab my wrist and squeeze to staunch the flow of blood. And to prevent her from coming back for seconds.

  “That wasn’t enough to do you any serious harm,” she says. Then she smiles. “Except you’ll find your new boyfriend less eager. He liked you because you were different from the other girls. How will he feel when he knows you’re one of us?”

  I’m not one of you, my eyes say.

  “Didn’t you know, sweetheart?” Lillian mocks me. “We prefer to feed off of the people who are most like us. And you’re one of us indeed. You’ll be mine forever.”

  She claps her hands.

  My volition returns. I get to my feet, shakily.

  “Are we clear, darling?” she asks me.

  I nod. And stagger out of her office.

  “I’d put something on that if I were you,” she calls after me. “I hear velvet ribbons are ‘of the moment.’”

  ANNABEL TAKES one look at my face and hustles me into the women’s bathroom. I sink down onto the immaculate floor below the unused tampon machine and cradle my knees to my chest. Annabel hugs me. Her body is corpse-like cold, but the hug, perversely, is comforting. Then she starts rubbing her cold hand in short circles on my back. For some reason, being touched by her isn’t repellent.

  “Let me see it,” she says, taking my wrist and examining the tacky puncture wounds. “This is nothing! This is just a sip. You’ll want to shop a little bit more than usual, but that’s it. And you’ll look good. Anemia is chic!”

  “Am I going to die?” I’m not sure I want to hear the answer.

  “With just one bite? You’ll live to a ripe old age. Though why you’d want to—”

  “How many bites does it take to kill? Three bites to kill a person, is that right?”

  “Unfounded rumor. There are so many of those…like we have no reflection. Not true. Those kinds of vampires went out of style a long time ago. Bram Stoker would hardly recognize what we’ve become. Stylish. Forward-thinking. We are garlic intolerant. You smell disgusting, by the way.”

  “Thanks.”

  “In the old days, once a vampire bit you, she would feed on you until you died. But now it’s better to keep the body count down. That’s one of our adaptations to modernity. We just bite and move on to the next thing.”

  She frowns. “Although once you’ve been bitten, you become more attractive to vampire kind. So you’re likely to get bitten over and over. You become what we call a ‘blood donor.’ Sometimes the donors die. But that’s really frowned upon.”

  I can’t turn off the clinical part of my brain. “When people die that way, it looks like they’ve had a heart attack or died from severe anemia, right?” I ask. “That’s what happened to Beverly.”

  “That’s correct,” Annabel says. “Beverly had to be put down because she got suspicious. We tried to make it as natural-looking as possible.”

  “And what about the fashion murders?
That has to be vampires, too, right?”

  Annabel looks uncomfortable. “It’s a vampire, we’re sure about that. Someone drinks and then messes up the body like a human murderer would. That’s what happened to the girls at the party. Whoever the fashion murderer is, she was at that party.”

  The conversation at the Carnivoré party, when Shane claimed that the murders brought suspicion on all of them, makes more sense now.

  “Do you think whoever is doing this is on the Tasty staff?”

  Annabel winces. “I’m afraid so. And worse, Lillian doesn’t seem worried. It’s her job to keep order but she’s not doing it. Some of us even suspect that she’s the rogue.”

  “So I’ve been bitten by a vampire who might also be a homicidal maniac?”

  “Personally, I don’t believe it’s her,” Annabel says. “She has too much to lose.”

  “So what happens to me now? Lillian can drink my blood whenever she wants?”

  Annabel looks evasive. “It’s more complicated than that. Most people can’t become vampires; there’s a genetic predisposition for it, and it’s very rare. We call it the ‘style gene.’ But I think you’ve got it. The fact that you can remember your encounter with Lillian is strongly suggestive—most humans black out during a vampire attack. And Lillian thinks so, too—that’s why she’s been so nice to you. If she keeps biting you, you won’t die but you could become a vampire.”

  I’m weirdly happy to learn that there is a gene that predisposes a person to vampirism. If there’s a biological basis, there is potentially a cure.

  But the bad news is I’ve got the gene and I’ve already been bitten once.

  “Lillian can only transform you if you consent,” Annabel says. “And you would change a lot before it even became possible. You’d start to shop a lot. You’d fetishize objects out of your price range. Your own father’s funeral wouldn’t keep you from a sample sale. By the time immortality was offered to you, you’d be simply desperate to stop the aging process.”

  “What’s it like to transform? Does it hurt?” I ask, unwillingly.

  Annabel’s gaze goes dark. “Oh, it hurts.” Two red spots appear on her cheeks, burning with the memory. “But it’s the most glorious pain you’ll ever feel.”

  “Thanks, I’ll pass.”

  “You might change your mind. I hope you do! It’s nice to have you around the office. I’m the newest-made on staff by decades and sometimes I still feel like an outsider. You and I could go through our undead youth together.”

  Under different circumstances, this would be sweet.

  She continues, “You should be proud. Vampirism is a sign of an aristocratic bloodline. Vampires were queens and countesses all the way through to the 1700s. But that got too…” She rolls her eyes at me. “Well, the revolutions.”

  “So that’s when vampires made the leap into fashion?”

  “Late nights. Beautiful clothing. It just made sense. Of course, they had to single-handedly change the human aesthetic. Before vampires, attractive women were chunky. Ruben-esque. You’ve seen the paintings. The undead brought thin in.”

  Vampires truly are evil.

  I have a million more questions, but Annabel gives me a final pat and gets to her feet. “We’ve got work to do,” she says cheerfully.

  I WALK back to my desk, holding my wrist with my hand. My phone is ringing when I get there.

  “We’re greeting the models at the airport on Sunday,” Nin announces.

  “Congratulations,” I say absently, picking up my phone.

  “Hi, Kate, this is Tom at Green Arrow Motel in Jeffersonville. You made a reservation with us.”

  “Right.”

  “Someone from your office just called…” He hesitates. “She asked me to cancel the rooms. She said the girls wouldn’t be needing them. And here’s what I wasn’t sure I understood: She said they’d be spending the night up at the old Turcotte place. But that’s not a safe spot for camping. I just wanted to double-check with you before I unblocked the rooms.”

  I don’t like the sound of this.

  “I think she did want to cancel the rooms,” I tell Tom slowly, “but I’ll make sure they know they can’t camp up there. Thanks for calling.”

  With dread I telephone the charter bus company I’d arranged to take the girls upstate. The woman on the phone confirms that my reservation is now “drop-off only.”

  The medical questionnaire. The focus on finding young women with hard-luck stories—i.e., girls without concerned family to search for them. Lexa’s determination that only she and her hand-picked crew would be on location. It all makes sudden horrible sense.

  The Tasty Girls aren’t going to be the next Cecilia Mendez.

  They’re going to be lunch.

  Lexa is mentally unbalanced. She’s obviously been strained to the breaking point by the pressure of achieving It girl status on this side of the Atlantic. And like any other woman, she’s been snacking to relieve the stress. Lexa is the rogue vampire, I’m sure of it. And the Tasty girls will probably die in those woods. Those who don’t will return to the city to be meals on wheels. Or rather, meals in flip-flops and skinny jeans, endlessly hanging around at cattle calls hoping an editor will bite. Sickened, I remember the girl I saved from the reject pile. She was one of the winners. And it will be my fault if she dies.

  I never thought I would be saying this, but ten aspiring models are going to meet their doom, and it’s up to me to save them.

  16

  A Blood Donor

  Saw Lillian. Avoid at all costs. She knows about us and is angry.

  I’m not sure sending this text message to James is the best idea, but he should be warned in case Lillian decides to punish him, too. We all know she thinks he’s tasty. He shows up in the doorway to the intern closet minutes later, just as I’m finishing tying the ribbon I found in my desk drawer over my wrist. James looks stubbly and bed-headed, just like when I last saw him, but is wearing a change of clothes, and he’s dark-eyed and angry.

  “You didn’t tell me you were going to talk to Lillian.”

  “There wasn’t time. I’m fine, more or less.” I roll my eyes toward Rachel and Nin, who are both looking at us curiously. “But you might want to steer clear of her.”

  “More or less?” He strides into the room, radiating concern, as if he’s going to examine me then and there to make sure I’m uninjured. I need to get him out of here, fast, while I can still stop Rachel from tipping off the gossips.

  “Let’s talk about this later.”

  “I have to shoot a party downtown tonight after work. Why don’t you come with me and we’ll talk then?”

  “Why don’t I meet you there?” I counter. Lillian already knows about us, but I don’t want to rub her face in it.

  He restrains himself from saying something else, nods curtly, and stalks out.

  “Woo-hoo!” hoots Nin.

  “You guys…” I’m torn between pride and embarrassment.

  “That StakeOut item was about you and him,” Rachel puts it together. “And if you’re avoiding Lillian, that means she’s found out. And you’ve gone from It list to shit list!” She’s already composing the piece in her head.

  There doesn’t seem to be any point in denying it.

  Rachel continues, “So we missed our chance for you to ask her if we can turn Reese’s column into an intern page.”

  “I guess so.”

  “That’s okay,” she says, though I didn’t apologize. “It was nice of you to offer.”

  She’s acted genuinely concerned for my health since I was out yesterday. Some of those calls I was ignoring were from her and Nin, I found out later; they were ready to messenger over some soothing aromatherapy they’d gotten in a beauty giveaway. Their friendliness is confusing.

  “You can’t tell anyone about this,” I say. “It will be the end of me.”

  “We won’t!” Nin interrupts. “We agreed: Interns are sticking together from now on. So”—she grins—�
��get us on the list for that party. And tell us all about him.”

  TWO HOURS later, Rachel, Nin, and I leave Oldham, heading downtown to a well-known garage-cum-hipster-party-space. The event is an opening for an artist who built a jetty in the shape of a Louis Vuitton logo and carved Karl Lagerfeld’s face in the side of a mountain. Then he flew by in a small plane and took pictures. Fashion will be out in force. All I want to do is grab James, go back to my aunt’s place, and…strategize. He’s very good at it. I fell asleep last night pressed up against his chest, with our limbs entangled, and I’ve never slept so soundly with another person. How can I be scared out of my mind and falling in love, all at once?

  But duty calls.

  Hidden underneath its velvet ribbon, my bite throbs. I have to repress the urge to dash back to Barneys and just look at the handbags. My aunt would be so happy if I charged one to my dad’s credit card. I am contaminated, and the poison is spreading. Luckily, a deep breath (redolent of garlic) breaks the spell. I’ve learned that the pungent plant isn’t much use for warding off vampires, but the bad smell keeps their mind control from working so completely.

  We arrive and push past the people waiting by the door. (Garlic doesn’t hurt there, either.) Inside, it’s difficult to see the photography through the crowd. I overhear a woman say, “It’s the new anti-environmentalism.” And her friend replies, “It’s so un-PC. I love it!”

  I want to smack them both. Instead, I try for the hundredth time to get in touch with Sylvia, but inexplicably her phone is switched off. The BlackBerry is her baby, so this is odd.

  James materializes next to me. His hair is wet with sweat and he’s carrying a big camera of the type that comes with a digital voice recorder for photo IDs. “I saw you come in. It’s a madhouse.” He looks around, then quickly kisses me.

  Rachel and Nin stand there avidly watching us until I glare at them.

  “Don’t you guys want to go to the bar and get us drinks?” I ask. Once they’ve left, I peck James back quickly and say, “You really shouldn’t do that.”

  “Are you okay?” he asks. “Your lips are cold as ice.”